Korean guys and white chicks

This story has been blowing up on the sports dailies, and I have to admit I am really taken aback by how harsh the tone is. I know the world of Korean entertainment is strict about any deviation from the ideal, but, damn, this is pretty harsh.

For those of you who aren’t up on your 2006 Korean pop culture, “Chatting with Beauties” was a weird show where a panel of Korean-speaking foreign women, chosen for their appearance, were asked questions by a guest panel of Korean male C-list celebrities, usually fishing for compliments about the virtues of Korean men and Korean society. It really brought out a lot of the exoticization and finger-pointing that expatriates get sick of, rather than promoting real intercultural dialog. Though, to be fair, a lot of people who watched it have praised it as being a big step forward for multi-cultural understanding in Korea.

Jamilla, being a tall, pretty Russian woman with Caucasian breasts, launched a small career out of it as a model and starlet, and then dropped off the pop culture radar.

And now she looks like a typical white woman in her thirties — which means she went from the exotic object of desire to a repulsive foreigner.

There was a fun bit of slang in the article: ‘kuntongryong’ (‘군통령’), a portmanteau of ‘kundae’, army, and ‘taetongryong’, president. Literally, ‘president of the army’, it refers to someone very popular with the young men performing their military service, i.e. pinup girls popular with the 18-25 demographic.

On that day the performers from that past KBC “Conversations with Beauties”, Jamilla, Bianca, Sayuri, Eva, Christina, Un Tong-ryong, Paulina, and Larissa performed. In particular, Jamilla, who revealed herself for the first time in a while, explained her circumstances, that, “I’ve been in Dubai for two years.” But the beautiful face that was once called, “President of the Army” has vanished. The suddenly aged face since we’ve last seen Jamilla is suspicious.

At Chu Pyong-jin’s question, “Haven’t you forgotten a lot of Korean since you left Korea?” Jamilla said, “I forgot a lot but lately I’ve been studying hard.”